Parents can already picture those first mornings of the school year: the challenge of dragging
cranky kids out of their beds after a couple of months of mellow summer mornings.

When school starts, their bodies naturally rebel. It’s never easy to be “waking up at the time
you’re biologically ready to be asleep,” says Dr. Peter Franzen, child-sleep expert and assistant
professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh’s Sleep Medicine Institute.

Lack of sleep can affect kids’ ability to learn, he says.

So here are some tips for getting them back to a sensible bedtime:

Begin adjusting bedtime at least two weeks before classes begin, says family sleep counselor
Dana Obleman, founder of the Sleep Sense system for getting babies and toddlers to sleep well.

“You don’t have to jump into going to bed at 7:30 and being really strict,” she says. “But do an
evaluation of where the bedtime has been falling and move back toward that by about 15 minutes
every third night.”

Plan a solid bedtime routine together, making sure they understand how much sleep is necessary.
Children, from toddlers to adolescents, need 10 to 12 hours of solid sleep, Obleman says. Teens are
likely to need at least nine hours.

Agree to turn off electronic screens one hour earlier, because the light from these devices
signals our bodies to stay awake, Franzen says.

“Those routines can be very personal family rituals — a certain snack that you eat, a certain
book you read, a certain song that you sing,” she says.

For adolescents and teens, Breffni says, keep in mind that the time they “go to bed” might not
be close to the time they actually fall asleep. So make sure older students understand what time
they should actually be asleep.

“One of my cornerstones is that if children are going to bed early enough, there shouldn’t be a
need to wake them in the morning,” Obleman says. “If you’re dragging them by the ankle every
morning, they’re going to bed too late.”